Beyond-Brawn-2nd-Edition

HOW TO DESIGN YOUR OWN TRAINING PROGRAMS
and then stiff-legged deadlift at the third would give your lower back a very
stressful workout every session, and overtraining would be likely. Divide
your chosen exercises over the three days so that no musculature other than
your abs and forearms is heavily involved in more than two of the three
workouts.
Two important additions for frameworks 1–4
a. Rib cage work
12.26 Add the “breathing” pullover or the Rader chest pull to each workout. (See
THE INSIDER’S TELL-ALL HANDBOOK ON WEIGHT-TRAINING TECH-
NIQUE for how to perform these valuable but too rarely performed exercises.)
Perform a couple of sets with the focus on maximum chest expansion.
Neither exercise is systemically demanding, so the inclusion of one of them
should not mar your recovery ability.
12.27 Some trainers are vigorously opposed to the possibility of increasing chest
size through rib cage enlargement, and claim that chest girth can only be
increased by muscle growth. But the fact is that many people have increased
their rib cages. I am one of them.
12.28 While even middle-aged trainees have modestly increased the size of their
rib cages through the breathing pullover and the Rader chest pull, some
young trainees have greatly increased the girth of their rib cages. Rib cage
enlargement will produce a deeper and broader chest, wider back and shoulders,
and, as a bonus, perhaps help improve posture.
12.29 e breathing pullover and the Rader chest pull are usually performed
immediately after an exercise that gets you heavily winded, e.g., high-rep
squats, deadlifts or leg presses. But you can do the rib cage work whenever
you want to, and without having done any exercise before it. You may even
find that if you are heavily winded you will not be able to do either of the rib
cage expansion exercises properly. You may even do a set or few of rib cage
work every day for a few months if you want to specialize on enlarging your
rib cage.
12.30 Go easy at the beginning, especially if you are not performing the rib cage
stretching when winded from a heavy exercise. e forced and exaggerated
breathing may make you feel dizzy unless you work into it over a period of a
few weeks. Your chest may get very sore, too, if you do not work into the rib
cage stretching exercise gradually.
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